I’m tempted to do the show-offy thing where I reference some tiny sliver of time and space that literally tens of people might have heard of, and they’re all total history nerds so whatever I pitched would get ‘splained into oblivion in a hundred post thread.

But if I go big, then I plow into the intersection of Pop Culture and Appropriation and nobody walks away from that car crash.

Oh yeah, I’d definitely go with the first option. Obscurity and unrelatability are both good defenses once you’re out in the world. I’m currently totally in love with my “Werewolves in Aquitaine” setting I squandered on a stupid Burning Wheel one-shot, and I want to swing back around to it. Prompting/modeling/shaping a premodern head space to play in is also one of my favorite Major Design Challenges, and I’ll probably spend my entire life trying to figure out how to do it. So I have to leave the second half of my question unanswered for now. It’s sorta-kinda been done! King Arthur Pendragon does some interesting stuff with, at least, cryptohistorical Arthurian values, but I’m not sure it’s directly portable or even the thing I’d want to do.

I had a longer post in mind about the (suit)ability of games to serve a journalistic function, but I just don’t have the energy to get into a long thing about it. Sorry. (The tl;dr answer is “yes, with massive caveats” and maybe I’ll write more about it down the road.)

12 thoughts on “#INDIEGAMEaDAY2016”

oooh Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon books… good stuff! The Last Kingdom miniseries adaptation was pretty good too. I love that it sort of dovetails with the Vikings TV series, given that the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok are the invaders in the time of Cornwell’s books. Good choice, Mark!

< ![CDATA[oooh Bernard Cornwell's Saxon books... good stuff! The Last Kingdom miniseries adaptation was pretty good too. I love that it sort of dovetails with the Vikings TV series, given that the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok are the invaders in the time of Cornwell's books. Good choice, Mark!]]>

Yeah, if you dig The Last Kingdom the show, definitely check out the books. I got three or four in before they started to feel pretty “samey” to me, and I moved on to other books, but Cornwell’s writing is fun, and I think he does a really good job of balancing history with “airport novel” adventure.

< ![CDATA[Yeah, if you dig The Last Kingdom the show, definitely check out the books. I got three or four in before they started to feel pretty “samey” to me, and I moved on to other books, but Cornwell’s writing is fun, and I think he does a really good job of balancing history with “airport novel” adventure.]]>

I am all in on a Warriors of Wessex BW game. Sign me up.
Also seconding on historical games. I much prefer settings with little to no supernatural (super-scientific, etc.) elements. I could play Burning Wheel in wholely mundane 12th century Europe and be happy for a long while. The past is interesting enough.

< ![CDATA[I am all in on a Warriors of Wessex BW game. Sign me up.
Also seconding on historical games. I much prefer settings with little to no supernatural (super-scientific, etc.) elements. I could play Burning Wheel in wholely mundane 12th century Europe and be happy for a long while. The past is interesting enough.]]>